Automattic Matt Does A U-Turn With Themes
Matt from Automattic the creator of WordPress blogging platform made an announcement at the WordCamp Argentina that WordPress will soon have a Themes marketplace to sell premium WordPress themes, how sweet.
Let’s backtrack a couple of month’s ago and see what Matt says about sponsored themes, quote from BlogHerald
All of this is after Matt Mullenweg used the defense, during the whole Sponsored themes fiasco, that it would be unfair for theme creators to make money from their work when plugin authors don’t get to.
You can read more about the thoughts from David Peralty. He has a wonderful post deciphering everything about this announcement. That post made me write this one as I was equally annoyed as he was but their commenting system broke so I thought to express my thoughts here.
Let’s get back to straight talk, after this announcement what do we take out of it. You ban sponsored themes because they make money, now you make money out of selling themes, that too 50% of them?
Well this can’t be blamed on anyone, money is a driving factor towards success and I envy and idolize Matt in providing such a wonderful platform that millions of users use to write their thoughts.
But this above turn should have some economics behind them and will benefit the Theme developers, we plugin developers can go to hell.
What’s the Catch?
Well assuming you have a theme for sale and sell about 10 themes a year at $60, now with the marketplace which is bound to be very popular and will have a huge user base of millions of users you sell at the most 100 of your themes a year.
Lets calculate 60 * 10 = 600 and 60 * 100 = 6000. Now Automattic gets 50% out of the $6000 so you are left with $3000 which is 400% increase from your current income. Wouldn’t theme developers be happy with 400% more income or bother with giving $3000 to Automattic?
This is a great business plan and is bound to succed.
How is this bad for you?
Almost 90% of the blogs use free WordPress themes, with these announcement you can seriously say good bye to quality free themes. There were days when users would create free themes to get more users to their websites. Don’t you think that money will weigh in more heavier now, after all more traffic equals to more money. So if you can money without traffic what will you opt for?
What about us plugin developers?
There will be no market place for plugin developers as we just add value to the WordPress platform not looks, people go by looks not what goes being running a website. I had planned to sell one of my plugins but will now offer it as open source. There is always a drawing factor as to how you look at things. I do get donations for my work from people who think I helped them in a worthwhile cause but that is not a driving factor in me creating plugins.
I appreciate when people talk about what I created because I wanted to help in my own way, every comment and post that has been made about the plugins I created are appreciation that something I did helped them solve a problem.
I have just used WordPress for last 7 months of my blogging after I switched from Joomla and with some of the plugins I created people have blogged saying that I was a genius, a WordPress Expert terming my plugins as the Best Plugin of the year, best plugin for WordPress. This has given me the utmost satisfaction and also the courage to say that I can do more such things without charging a penny.
Do you think an open source platform should sell addons that they have not created? Do let me know.
adam
November 2nd, 2007 at 6:49 am #
while template design has a certain sexiness that plugin development can’t easily achieve, a marketplace could certainly work for plugins as well. there are always a ton of wp.com users begging for share this/last.fm/podcasting etc. matt could certainly extend the functionality to plugins.
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Jared
November 2nd, 2007 at 11:34 am #
I think the work you do is great and it’s slightly unfortunate that the plug-in creators will not be getting the same recognition and income as the theme developers will as a result of this “marketplace.”
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keith Reply:
November 2nd, 2007 at 2:45 pm
well its ok we get our share of compliments which is what matters.
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Rishi
November 3rd, 2007 at 6:47 am #
Matt is obviously right. Sponsored themes are a lot heck. Plus, people don’t like to use them. Pity for plugin editors but plugin makers like that Secure PHP Contact Form for Wordpress guy, they are smart, they include a backlink from the form to there site.
I think you should also add this to your WPAU if you want some backlinks, it can be something like “[Blog-Name] upgraded with WPAU!”
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Dave J. (Scoop0901)
November 3rd, 2007 at 2:02 pm #
A lot of good people have left the WordPress world. Many have headed to Habari, while others have gone in other directions. Why? Because of stuff Matt’s done with WordPress, if you read the various sites.
Double-stepping like this is stupid.
Themes at $60 with half going to WP? Not!
If you talk with many of the WordPress theme developers, they find out what kind of theme you want, then go find a free theme that has the basics of what you want, then modify it to your tastes. In fact, one “theme developer” I was working with a few months ago actually sent me a proposal for a theme — the CSS and two pages as a sample — and guess what I found? The original theme creator’s name, URL, and info in the theme. At the top of the CSS file, though, what did it say? That it was created — entirely — by the person I was dealing with. Sorry, but that’s underhanded and wrong. In fact, it’s stealing. Do these “theme developers” understand copyrights, at all? They understand the copyright when they want to, but when it isn’t to their advantage, they think they can take and twist all they want.
Needless to say, the developer I was working with quickly disappeared after I threatened to forward the complete email, with full headers and attachment, to the developer of the original theme. Since the theme was never finalized, there’s not a lot the original theme developer could do, legally, so I let it go.
The theme developers — such as Sadish Bala, who I’ve purchased several themes from over the past few months — would do well to NOT associate their themes with WP’s theme plan. Instead, put up one theme, get a link back to their main site, and keep the profits in their own pocket.
It’s just like last year, when WP went after select sites using the words “WordPress” in the site’s domain name. WP threatened legal action. If you do a quick search on WordPress in Google, looking for site URLs, you will find at least 10 sites that are NOT affiliated with WordPress/Automattic that are using WordPress in the domain name. I guess the threats go out to those that don’t play by some rules Matt lays down for friends? Who knows. No matter what it is, it’s all double standards, and as long as “WordPress” (aka Automattic) is doing something, it’s kosher. If “WordPress” (aka Automattic) isn’t doing it, then it isn’t kosher.
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